The E3

The E3 was the event you waited for. Every year there’d be this one moment when the industry gathered and announced what mattered next. I remember the year of the PS3 and the Wii—two very different answers to what gaming would be. The Wii was the confusing one. Nobody understood it at first. Motion controls, less power, the whole thing looked like Nintendo had surrendered the hardware race. Then you’d see someone actually hold the controller and move it, and it was still confusing but different.

The PS3 looked like the future in the way things used to look like the future—curved, expensive, overwhelming. Everything that mattered would end up there. The Wii turned out to have its own answer entirely.

The convention doesn’t exist like that anymore. Companies announce things when it suits them, events stream to nobody in particular, news arrives constant instead of concentrated. Maybe it’s better. Maybe it’s smarter. But there was something about E3 as a moment you could point to. This is when they told us what comes next. You felt the weight of it.

I don’t miss the PR or the hype—that was always there. But I miss the shape. The timing. The sense that something important was being announced right now, in that place, and you were there watching it happen.